One of the primary objectives when establishing a telephone call connection with another person is to communicate information to the other person. However, the other person may not be available when an incoming call is received and, therefore, does not answer the call. In such situations, the caller can leave a voicemail for the other person to retrieve at a later time.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram of an example voicemail recording environment, according to the prior art. A caller client device 100, such as a mobile phone, places a call over a telephony network 110 to recipient client device 140. The telephony network 110 may be a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) or PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network). The call is routed and/or intercepted by a YATE (Yet Another Telephony Engine) 120, which facilitates and manages various call functions. For example, the YATE 120 can pass the call to an IVR (Interactive Voice Response) system 130 that is configured to prompt the caller for various information. For example, the IVR system 130 may prompt the caller to record a voicemail. The IVR system 130 notifies the YATE 120 and the YATE 120 records the voicemail over the telephony network 110. The YATE 120 stores the voicemail in a voicemail server 150. The IVR 130 does not communicate directly with the recipient client device 140-YATE 120 is responsible for handling and directing all audio to the recipient client device 140. For example, the IVR 130 indicates to the YATE 120 which audio to play in certain scenarios, such as when recording voicemail. Optionally, a transcription service 155 can transcribe the recorded voicemail file and provide a text-based transcription of the voicemail to the recipient client device 155.
One problem with the conventional system for recording voicemail is that the audio quality of the voicemail is poor. As described, the voicemail is recorded over the telephony network 110, which introduces noise and artifacts into the recorded audio. The noise and artifacts can severely degrade the audio quality of the voicemail, making the voicemail difficult to understand for the recipient.
Accordingly, there remains a need for a system and method for recording voicemail that overcomes the audio quality problems described above.